A judge in Italy has convicted 23 Americans, mostly CIA employees, in absentia for whisking a suspected jihadist leader, one Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, off the streets of Milan in 2003 and sending him to Egypt for questioning, where he claims he was tortured repeatedly. It may be that Italy was teed off because they had the guy under surveillance at the time, but the verdict is also a symbolic protest against the practice of “extraordinary rendition,” whereby various suspects have been taken to countries where there isn’t the slightest ambivalence about using torture and you know the CIA had to know that.

I’m not upset about this. Extraordinary rendition, like the use of torture, is unworthy of the America I know and love. Even if it’s the Italians doing this, the U.S. govt. deserves to have its nose rubbed in it.

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